The Best American Poetry 2013 (16 page)

Where have I been, can I say for certain?

Where have I been?

But I know where I am—I'm here, in the strawberry field.

Here.

I'm right here.

from
PEN America

I'm all for leaving this world,

entering that bright space

of becoming like dewdrops

on the morning buttercups

I planted last week before all the rain came.

Already they bloom yellow with

first light—6:30 a.m., that

magic time when the palms

and pines emerge from the darkness,

when light clings to the edges

of bougainvillea and philodendron,

when the marsh rabbit fights

with the hungry ravens for fallen

seeds from the bird feeder.

I remember the colors

of last night's river,

the minor Mississippi

that flowed through my dreams,

how I bent down toward the current,

pulled tiny, glimmering fish

from the branch shadows.

And this morning I awoke at dawn

and knew the time by the texture

of that early light—still, gray,

but gathering meaning.

And then, a cup of coffee

on the back porch, stars still

spinning in the heavens, moisture

gleaming across the yard

like a fallen constellation.

I breathe in

these small gods, these

scents and ghosts and shadows

that rise in early morning,

and I swear I see Eden

burning just behind

the wall of palm

that shields us from the drainage

ditch, where a million mosquitoes

buzz like tiny angels.

I praise this morning.

I praise drainage ditch and mosquitoes,

I praise the tiny insect stings,

which argue for my own life,

yes, with each bite

my flesh tingles with meaning,

and with each brightening

moment, the world around me

comes into greater focus,

until it is finally Florida, a feast

of flowers and bugs and light,

and I feel as if

I will linger forever in the bright

fields of this moment, that the dog's

soft fur against my foot

argues for life

more than any priest,

more than any religion,

more than any supernatural

explaining of this sputtering, beautiful world

fired with the tangible meaning of root, stem, petal,

bone, feather, beak.

from
Gulfshore Life

Ignorance will carry me through the last days,

the blistering cities, over briny rivers

swarming with jellyfish, as once my father

carried me from the car up the tacked carpet

to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew it.

from
Poetry

after calling our son & daughter

to wish them happy & good luck

we get to bed early but get

a phone call from my mother

who died in April she doesn't

say where she's calling from though

I can hear laughter in the background

and she says Uncle Frank is making

his famous Manhattans which are

she adds gratuitously as always

a lot better than I was ever able to make—

“one of his really puts you to sleep”—

and I have to reply “Mom do you know

that you never once so far as I can

remember have told me ‘I love you' ”

and she says rather sadly

“You've always been somewhat of

a fool; don't you remember how,

that time you passed out at my birthday party

one of your cousins told you later

I cried out ‘My son, my only son!'?”

from
The American Poetry Review

It is important to remember that you will die,

lifting the fork with the sheep's brain

lovingly speared on it to the mouth, the little

piece smooth on the one side as a baby

mouse pickled in wine; on the other, blood-

plush and intestinal atop

its bed of lentils. The lentils

were once picked over for stones

in the fields of India perhaps, the sun

shining into tractor blades slow-moving

as the swimmer's arms that now pierce,

then rise, then pierce again the cold

water of the river outside your window called

The Heart or The Breast, even, but meaning

something more than this, beyond

the crudeness of flesh; though what

is crude about flesh anyway,

watching yourself every day lose

another bit of luster?

It is wrong to say one kind of beauty

replaces another. Isn't it your heart

along with its breast muscles that

has started to weaken; solace

isn't possible for every loss, or why else

should we clutch, stroke, gasp, love

the little powers we once

were born with? Perhaps the worst thing

in the world would be to live forever.

Otherwise what would be the point

of memory, without which

we would have nothing to hurt

or placate ourselves with later?

Look. It is only getting worse

from here on out. Thank God. Otherwise

the sun on this filthy river

could never be as boring or as poignant,

the sheep's brain trembling on the fork

wouldn't seem once stung

by the tang of grass, by the call

of some body distant and beloved to it

singing through the milk. The fork

would be only a fork, and not the cool

heft of it between your fingers, the scratch

of lemon in the lentils, onion, parsley

slick with blood; food that,

even as you lift it to your mouth,

you'd never thought you'd eat, and do.

from
New England Review

I

If the road's a frayed ribbon strung through dunes

continually drifting over

if the night grew green as sun and moon

changed faces and the sea became

its own unlit unlikely sound

consider yourself lucky to have come

this far     Consider yourself

a trombone blowing unheard

tones     a bass string plucked or locked

down by a hand its face articulated

in shadow, pressed against

a chain-link fence     Consider yourself

inside or outside, where-

ever you were when knotted steel

stopped you short     You can't flow through

as music or

as air

II

What holds what binds is breath     is

primal vision in a cloud's eye

is gauze around a wounded head

is bearing a downed comrade out beyond

the numerology of vital signs

into predictless space

III

The signature to a life requires

the search for a method

rejection of posturing

trust in the witnesses

a vial of invisible ink

a sheet of paper held steady

after the end-stroke

above a deciphering flame

from
Granta

It was July. It was my birthday. I

was still drinking then. I went with the men

to a lake with no clothing on. The men

who for a year I'd loved hardly and I

walked to the water. All that love hurt my I-

can't-say-what. My hands knew nothing but men

that year. In snow I stand out. Every man

I've ever seen has seen me back. My eyes

sweat from it. Though from there the summer breaks

off, it felt sharp and bright through that last hour,